To a customer seeking out a new home builder, the process can all be a little overwhelming. It’s easy to wonder:

Who are the real people behind all the glitz and glamour?

We want our clients to get to know HardwickGC team members who will be partnering with them to create the home of their dreams. Today, we introduce you to our Construction Manager, Justin Lednar.

Where do you reside in Central Florida?
I live in the Wekiva area with my wife, Katie.

What do you do with your free time?
My wife and I foster and train Golden Retrievers to be service dogs with New Horizons. We love gardening too and working on remodeling projects at our own home.

Why did you get into the homebuilding field?
Back in New England, when I was in high school, I started with summer jobs and vacation jobs. And just never really got out of it.

What is your education history?
In college, I was a pre-med physics major with a concentration in education and a minor in deaf studies. I actually taught physics at a school for the Deaf.

What does your job at Hardwick entail?
I handle everything related to structure and engineering. It’s a lot of coordination between the people who are actually building the things and the ones who are designing and drawing the things. I work with everything from concrete footers underground to finishing the tile and marble surfaces, cabinetry, and finish carpentry. I take all the ideas and the vision and coordinate the specific experts to make it all real.

What is your typical day like?
I move around between projects, making sure everything is going smoothly. And when I’m doing something, and a client calls, I just kind of drop everything and take care of whatever they need. There’s a lot of client interaction and management of the tradespeople.

What is a common question you get from customers?
Well, I often hear, “when are we going to be done, and what is this going to cost?” The big three are the job scope, the budget of the job, and the timeline of the job. That really drives all projects. I seek to understand each client and their particular tastes. I know I’m building their home that they’re going to be in for presumably the rest of their lives.

What is the most unusual request you’ve had for a home?
Well, with one of our current projects, we’re basically building a walkout basement around a pool. I’m excited to see how that one turns out!

What do you like most about your job?
My job is a combination of using a lot of my personal interests and skillsets. It’s never the same day twice. It’s a lot of problem-solving. You can design something carefully, but you’re still going to come across issues in the field that need to be worked out.
But when we’re done with a house, I kind of forget about all the nuts and bolts behind the scenes and how it went. Every home has a thousand stories behind its construction. Seeing the home finished and knowing what we put in to make that happen is very satisfying. At the end of the day, we’ve created something that’s going to be there for decades or longer. It’s something we can always kind of point to and say, “I built that.” So that’s very cool.

What advice do you have for prospective custom home clients?
When people are starting the process, it’s best to have a clear vision and stick to it. The biggest thing that drives up timeline and costs are changes along the way, and with custom building, we are very much involved today with the homeowners. The homeowners who come in and know 90% of exactly what they want, and then they stick with it, don’t second guess themselves along the way; those projects do the best when it comes to sticking to both the timeline and the budget.

What do you think is the best way for clients to gather and share their home-building ideas?
Most of our clients have a professional designer involved. The designer will put together a pictorial of the surfaces and the finishes along with measurements and drawings for accent walls and fireplaces and things like that. This gives us as builders the combination of architectural drawings and pictorials that really help convey that the finished look that they’re going for.